CYCLOCROSS!

My favorite form of bike racing.  

One of my teammates unfortunately crashed out early in the season and injured his hand. It's kept him out of racing, but he's way faster than most of us and also a damn good photographer, so it's kinda win-win for the rest of us right now.  

He captured a great action sequence of me performing my famed "double nut crunch" remount technique at a race a few weeks back.   

A weird thing has happened though. Except for a mechanical issue last night, I've just been having a killer 'cross season.  I used to be pretty happy if I could just stay on the lead lap in B. Now I find myself nipping at the heels of the leaders.  I'm certainly not any stronger this year, I've just been employing a lot more strategy.  

See the thing with cyclocross is it's kind of a suffer fest- you're always pinned in the anaerobic death zone.   But for a lot of people in the B races, they assume that's all it is, and if they suffer just a little bit more than the next guy, they'll beat them.  Fortunately, that's not the case. I've had a lot of luck in employing some simple strategies to draft off people and use them to get ahead.  The trouble is, I don't think any of us in B are smart enough to use this to help each other out.  I've run a few people into the ground so far this season, and that's a great way to beat them- but it doesn't help me move up and overtake the next guy in the pack. I'm half tempted to make the jump to A, just so I can start playing more strategy games with the big boys. But man, that extra 15 minutes of pure, sweet hell is going to put some serious demands on my fitness level.